


(baby) don't make me spell it out

by extasiswings



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Law School Woes, M/M, Marriage Proposal, certified Messes the both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 14:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19275589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: One night near the end of first semester 1L finals, just a few weeks before the two-year anniversary of their first kiss, Alex finds himself looking up from his desk with its messy piles of color-coded notes and tabbed textbooks to see Henry asleep on the couch, clearly having dozed off waiting for him to come to bed, and unbidden he thinks,God, I’m going to marry this man.It startles him, the spike of adrenaline that floods through him waking him up and bringing the parts of his brain turning over concepts likeproximate causeandstrict liabilityto a standstill as he stares at Henry.I want to marry this man.





	(baby) don't make me spell it out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madsthenerdygirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/gifts).



> I read this on Sunday night, staying up until 4AM because I couldn't put it down, and then I reread it again yesterday, and today I just couldn't help myself so have some post-canon ridiculousness brought to you by the fact that I love these two beautiful Disasters.

The thing is, Alex Claremont-Diaz has always, on some level, known this would be forever. He knew it after he came out to his mom when he was trying desperately not to look at it too hard, felt it whispering underneath the realization of _Oh, I love him_ at the lake house in Texas, held it back in favor of more polished, practiced words when he stood up in front of the world and said _this man, he’s my choice_. 

He’s always known this—him and Henry—would be forever. But before, it was more abstract. Alex didn’t have to _think_ about it. 

Now, though. Now, he’s living in a brownstone in Brooklyn and suffering through the special kind of hell that is 1L while cursing himself for ever deciding to go to law school, and most mornings he gets to wake up next to the man he loves, or at least wake up to a note and a cup of coffee with cinnamon on the nightstand and it—well. _Forever_ doesn’t feel so abstract anymore. 

One night near the end of first semester 1L finals, just a few weeks before the two-year anniversary of their first kiss, Alex finds himself looking up from his desk with its messy piles of color-coded notes and tabbed textbooks to see Henry asleep on the couch, clearly having dozed off waiting for him to come to bed, and unbidden he thinks, _God, I’m going to marry this man_.

It startles him, the spike of adrenaline that floods through him waking him up and bringing the parts of his brain turning over concepts like _proximate cause_ and _strict liability _to a standstill as he stares at Henry.__

_I want to marry this man._

The second iteration is more deliberate, and although Alex would deny it if asked, it makes something in his chest go warm and soft, draws him up out of his chair and across the room so he can gently kiss Henry awake, lace their fingers together to pull Henry to his feet and lead him off to their bedroom. 

(It’s not as though it’s the first time the idea has _ever_ come up, because they’re public figures and the media loves to speculate, but it’s one thing for random tabloids to speculate about imminent wedding bells only to be silenced by Zahra’s standard quote about about the two of them still being very young and perfectly happy with the current status of their relationship, and entirely another for it to be his own idea.)

Alex doesn’t say anything about it—not to Henry, not to Nora or June or anyone else—but he tucks the thought carefully away instead of shoving it down in a panic like he might have done two years ago. And if sometimes he finds himself playing with Henry’s signet ring, still on the chain around his neck, and considering rings and vows and the feel of the word _husband_ on his tongue, pieces of the future that don’t involve winning cases or running for office, that’s between him and God. It’s important to have goals, after all.

* * *

The thing is, though, that it’s all well and good to have grand revelations about relationships, but it’s not like Alex is going to _do_ anything about it. Law school is three years of work on a whole new level from undergrad, and after all that he’s still going to have to take the bar exam. And since his mom is still the President, and Henry is, obviously, still a prince, any actual wedding would be An Event™ on the scale of...well, the Royal Wedding. Needless to say, being at all involved in the planning of something like that would not be conducive to a productive law school career.

So, Alex tries not to think about it, and keeps not talking about it. After his first year ends, he takes a summer internship with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. When his second year starts, he joins Law Review and fills extra hours that he isn’t in class with work in the Civil Rights clinic and stretches himself so thin that more than once Henry ends up coming to campus to collect him from the library or the clinic and, and, and—

Between all that, there’s very little additional brain space to expend on thoughts of how fiancé sounds nicer than boyfriend, and it’s a lot easier to accept the much more logical—and lawerly, ha—reasoning that the media coverage alone would be a nightmare if they were to suddenly get engaged. 

But still.

Still.

And then...Alex finds the ring. 

Henry is in England the week after Alex finishes his 2L finals, and Alex is running around frantically trying to pack everything he needs to spend the summer in Los Angeles working for MALDEF, and searching for his favorite pair of cufflinks because his dad has some fundraiser he wants to drag him along to when he arrives—

“I can’t help you find them if I don’t know where you’ve looked, now can I?” Henry’s voice over the phone is amused, and it would probably be enough to get Alex to smile as well if he wasn’t on a major time crunch.

“Everywhere.” 

“Well, obviously you haven’t looked _everywhere_ , love. Otherwise, you would have found them already.”

“Sass! I call the love of my life in my hour of direst need—”

A muffled laugh—”Always so dramatic—”

Alex’s hand closes around a box that feels about the right size at the back of his sock drawer and crows in victory. 

“Shall I take to mean success, then?” Henry asks. “It’s only, Bea just started rather pointedly glancing at her watch…”

“Yes, yes,” Alex assures. “Love you. Hope you have a miserable time.”

“I love you, too. And I’m quite sure I will.”

It’s only when Alex hangs up that he realizes the drawer he was rummaging in was not _his_ sock drawer, but Henry’s. And when he opens the box—

Is it possible to have a heart attack at 25? Because Alex is not fully convinced that isn’t what happens when he registers the sight of the ring, promptly drops the box as if burned, and then has to hunt for the ring when it gets lost in the lush carpet.

His palms are damp when he finds it, and Alex sits back on his heels on the floor as he turns it over and over. It’s a simple thing—a gold band with an etched groove like a wave—but inside.

_You pierce my soul_ , Alex reads, the flowing script stealing his breath. _Persuasion_. Jane Austen. 

Because of course he did. 

Alex half-wonders if he should put it back; he’s still on a deadline, still needs to finish packing—hell, he still needs to find his damn cufflinks apparently. But that really doesn’t seem to matter as he stares and stares and stares.

_Oh, what the hell?_ He slips it on. 

It’s a strange feeling, the weight of something new and foreign on his hand. But at the same time, it’s good—a comforting anchor to keep him grounded—and the only two thoughts in Alex’s head are that he never wants to take it off and, absurdly, wondering how Henry got his ring size without him knowing. 

There’s a knock at the door—Amy—and Alex whips around, hiding his hand behind his back. She raises an eyebrow, casting her gaze around the disaster area that is the bedroom, but doesn’t ask.

“You ready? Car will be here in five.”

“Yeah,” Alex rasps out, clearing his throat to try and steady himself before he repeats it. “Yeah, just—uh—one minute.”

When Amy steps out again, he glances down once more, rubbing the thumb of his free hand over the band once, twice, before reluctantly slipping it off, placing it back in the box, and returning it to Henry’s drawer. 

He finds the cufflinks loose in the nightstand—when he does he remembers exactly how they got there, namely the fact that on the occasion he’d last worn them, he’d nearly ripped his shirt getting it off and had zero patience to deal with them because Henry had been—the memory distracts him until Amy shouts his name a minute later. 

“What are you grinning about?” She asks when Alex slips into the car.

_I’m getting engaged_ , he thinks, and his smile widens.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Just looking forward to California.”

“Uh huh.”

* * *

Except...Henry doesn’t ask. Not any time during the summer, not during the fall when Alex is drowning in fellowship applications, not at Christmas, or New Years, or Valentine’s Day, or his birthday. And it’s not like it _matters_ because Alex is busy trying to get a job and register to take the bar and graduate, but when even graduation goes by without a whisper, it’s hard not to wonder. Had he imagined it? Had Henry changed his mind? 

It _was_ an engagement ring, right? It had to have been. 

The box is gone when Alex’s curiosity finally drives him to check Henry’s drawer again. 

Huh.

But bar prep is a thing, and the last thing Alex needs to be doing is obsessing about a ring or why his boyfriend of five years won’t ask him to marry him. He’s fine, it’s cool, it’s totally not a big deal—

“Do you not want to marry me?”

Alex blurts it out over the breakfast table and Henry chokes on his tea. 

“I— _what_?”

The tips of Henry’s ears go red and Alex rakes a hand through his hair, shoving his book of outlines to the side.

“You—” His stomach drops and he wets his lips before starting again. 

“A year ago, I found a ring in your drawer,” Alex admits. “And I thought—but you haven’t—and I’m _happy_ , I _am_ , I love you, but I thought—and then you didn’t…”

He trails off and Henry is dead silent for a moment, lip caught between his teeth, before he pushes his chair back.

“Right. One moment.”

Alex is left blinking as Henry vanishes out of the kitchen. His coffee is lukewarm—he’s half-wondering if he should attempt heating it up again when Henry reappears, a familiar box in hand. 

“Henry—”

“No, wait,” Henry interrupts, crossing the room in a handful of strides. “I—fifteen times.”

“What?”

“That’s—” A rueful smile curls Henry’s lips. “—that’s how many times I’ve tried to ask you to marry me. Fifteen times.”

Alex sits back in his chair, staring as Henry turns the box over in his hands. 

“I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that,” he manages finally.

“I never got it out,” Henry admits. “Whenever I started, it suddenly never seemed like the right time, and I’m not—I’ve told you before, I’m not _good_ at these things, and I wanted—”

“Marry me.” The words trip off Alex’s tongue, rushing out into the air like whatever door he’s kept them locked behind for the past three years suddenly clicked open. 

Henry freezes. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks down at the box in his hand. 

“I _was_ going to get down on one knee,” he mutters, and Alex laughs, bright and clear, warmth spreading through him because that wasn’t a no, it wasn’t a no, and there’s a ring in that box—

He scoots his chair out from the table and reaches for Henry’s hips, yanking him off balance and into his lap.

“If you take me upstairs, you can get on your knees for me all you want,” Alex teases, already kissing him. “Just say you’ll marry me first.”

“Of course I’ll marry you, you absolute wanker,” Henry laughs. “I’m the one who bought a ring after all.”

“Well, it did sit in a box for a year, you can hardly blame me for—mmf.”

Later, much later, Alex sends a text to the group chat of their hands interlaced on their bed, the ring clearly visible on his finger. His phone starts ringing immediately, and he shuts it off just as quickly in favor of pulling Henry on top of him again.

“So.”

“So,” Henry replies.

“What are the chances we could elope to Gretna Green?”

“Absolutely less than zero.”

“We’re not having a $75,000 cake.”

“Darling.”

“Yes?”

“Do shut up.”

“Make me.”

_Yeah_ , Alex thinks when Henry swoops down and kisses him quiet. _This is forever._


End file.
